MP’s Deep Purple face

Richard Edmondson

We doubt The Guardian ever crosses the path of Mikey Ellis, but the member for Northampton North might like to know he was featured prominently in a recent piece in which Speaker John Bercow urged party leaders to control their “rowdy” MPs.

Rowdy is not an adjective one would normally ascribe to Mikey who is, after all, slavishly loyal to his great leader and deferential in the extreme to the House of Windsor.

But, as we reported here a fortnight back, Mikey got a proper ticking off in PMQs on January 30, being told by the Speaker: “Calm yourself and be quiet.

Learn it, man”. Mr Bercow reportedly said in The Guardian: “It’s a bad thing when the decibel level exceeds anything that Deep Purple – the loudest band of the 1970s – would have dreamed of in their heyday...” This was a single line enough to trigger 150 online comments which characteristically, ranged between slagging off MPs generally to arguing that, in fact, Motorhead/Stiff Little Fingers etc were louder than the creators of Smoke on the Water. Either way, Mikey’s card is marked. Can we expect a more supine approach to PMQs for the next two years for the Honourable Member?

AN interesting test for #PCC Simmonds on February 22. Will he let the birthday of (one of) his hero George Washington, pass unnoticed at Wootton Hall? If it were the West Wing, President Bartlet would surely arrive armed with a tray of Dunkin’ Donuts for Toby, Josh, Donna and co. Krispy Kremes would be excellent, Adam, but so too are Oliver Adams’s iced donut range...

DID Bran Eldred, deputy leader at the Guildhall, get carpeted by The Mack the other day? Weirdly, Bran was quoted in a web story run by a (very out of town) newspaper that clearly broke a 9am embargo set for the announcement of the third act to play Delapre Abbey this summer. The Mack, who has micro-managed the pre-concert publicity thus far, presumably so as not to upset any sensitive souls in the music industry, was nowhere to be seen in this renegade update. Eek! He later told us all was well with Brandon, which we believe. Obviously.